Tahina or Liquid Contentment!

According to writers in the Al-Ahram’s Friday Supplememt, sesame paste or Tahina as it is known all over the Middle East would be the elixir of contentment! “Although it does not make noise like the harvest of cotton or wheat.. sesame represents a quietly contented part of our lives, whether sprinkled on the ubiquitous Ta’ameya pattie, or in liquid form, drizzled over a plate of Fava beans (ful).

Traditionally, the paste is made by grinding the sesame seeds between special stones used especially for this purpose for the last few centuries. According to article, there remain only a few traditional mills for sesame in Old Cairo (serga). The best-tasting sesame comes from Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt.

Tahina dip (photo: 21food)

The typical way Tahina is served is as a dip. You can find the paste at any Mediterranean food store.

Serves 4

¾ cup Tahina

2 tblsp Lime juice or vinegar

½ to ¾ cup Water

Salt, Cumin to taste

Start out by incorporating the lime juice or vinegar until you get a smooth paste. Add salt and cumin. Then add the water one table spoonful at a time to avoid lumps. Add enough water to reach the consistency of your choice. 

Drizzle this sauce over sandwitches (photo: mediterraneanfood)

Tahina can also be dissolved into yogurt to made a delicious sauce accompaniment (Tartour) to grilled meats and poultry. Simply add 2 tablespoons of Tahina per cup of yogurt.

Delightful Sycamore

Sycamore branches with their fruits growing directly from the branch (photo: Dr. Loutfy Boulos)

This time of the year is the peak of ripening Sycamore fruits. The Sycamore tree was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, perhaps for its ability to bear fruit all year long. It was godess Hathor’s dedicated tree, and she is pictured sprouting out of the trunk to feed the deceased and his family. The wood of the Sycamore has survived for thousands of years unchanged, from the Pharaonic era until today. It was used to make coffers, furniture and small ornate objects on display at the Egyptian Museum.

Fruits at different stages of ripening as seen from color (photo: Dr. Loutfy Boulos)

The delightful Sycamore Syrup brings all that goodness to your plate! Made from all natural ingredients, the Syrup contains no preservatives, relying on sugar content and pH for preservation. It can be used to uplift the taste of any recipe, adding a sweet, fruity flavor to meat dishes, stuffed vegetables and salad dressings.

Growing out of the tree trunk, the Goddess gives fruit and drink to the deceased in this 19th Dynasty depictiion (Tomb of Sennedjem, West Bank, Luxor; photo: touregypt)

Herbed Cucumbers and Labneh

The Mediterranean diet that Middle Easterners have enjoyed for centuries has recently made headlines in the West for its healthy features. With its variety of green, leafy vegetables, monounsaturated fats like olive oil, lots of fresh or dry fruits and juices; and a choice of non-animal protein sources from favorite pulses and whole grains, the MedDiet is increasingly popular with health-conscious consumers.

In the June 2015 issue of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine, this "Labneh with Herbed Cucumbers" recipe offers a refreshing addition to any summer meal! (The recipe below is adapted for local use.)

Ingredients (serves 6)
3 packs, 200 g     Yoghurt, drained overnight
5 pcs                     Cucumbers, medium-size, peeled & sliced
1 pc                       Shallot, sliced thin
1 bunch                Mixed fresh herbs: parsley, dill, mint, cilantro
                              and arugula/rocca (gargir), sliced thin
3 tblsp                  Olive oil              
3 loaves               Brown pita bread
Salt, white pepper & Egyptian lime juice to taste

Photo: Oprah Winfrey's O magazine

Drain yoghurt overnight in the fridge by slitting the tops and lining the packs on their side in a shallow soup dish. Peel and slice cucumbers arranging them in a bowl (if organic, no need to peel). Wash and slice all the herbs and the shallot. To ensure that herbs don't wilt, mix olive oil, salt, lime juice and herbs with cucumbers just before serving. Spread labneh on pretty salad dish, top with herbed cucumbers and drizzle with olive oil. Serve with toasted whole wheat brown pitta loaves. Voila!

Note: If no fresh mint is available, you can use dry mint, crumbled and sprinkled. 

King of Limes

One of Egypt's best kept secrets is its lime! Yellow or green, small in size but big in flavor, this type of lime closely resembles other limes in appearance, except that it is especially juicy and perfumed (Banzaheir variety). Limes are delightful in plain lemonade, mint lemonade, or flavored and colored pink with pomegranate. One use that is unfortunately dying out is in artisan-made Granita, a frozen ice sherbet treat that used to be popular on the coastal towns, especially in summer. Commercial popsicle-like variations are found in the frozen section of the supermarket, and occasionally, the "slush" drink version.  

Fresh mint brings added refreshment to this Egyptian "lime-onade"! (Photo: thepalefox.wordpress)

Squeezed onto soups, salads and baked Fava beans, limes are a staple condiment served at every meal. Egyptians love them with fish and seafood, as well as in dishes such as Stuffed Vine Leaves (Warak 'Einab), giving them a unique tangy, lemony taste. They can be used interchangeably with yellow citrus lemon in any recipe.

With parsley, garlic and onion, fresh lime is essential for fish dishes (Photo: abissadacook.blogspot)

Lime juice is one of the many fresh fruit juices that can be enjoyed year-round in Egypt! The flowers of the tree start to blossom in early spring and the fruits ripen slowly. If left on the tree, they turn from bright green to yellow and drop off. This means the limes are plentiful all year long, except for a short period in summer when they become less juicy and their price goes through the roof.

Tagins or Earthenware Cooking

 

(Photo: forums.egullet)

Traditionally in Egypt, Tagins are used for oven-baked vegetable stews in the countryside, but even city-dwellers cook special dishes in them. Authentic dishes are cooked at home in a “Bram” or برام, in Arabic, for recipes such as “Roz Me3ammar”, a rice dish with a creamy texture, made with tasty morsels of chicken. The delicious Egyptian dessert Om Ali is also baked in the oven in a "Bram".

Shali Lodge Hotel facebook page, photo: Copyright Suzy Bakos Photography

Ideal for slow-cooked dishes in the oven, the Tagins (clay pots and pans) hold their temperature for a long time, even after you take them out of the oven. Another particularity of earthenware is that it's porous, so food looses some of its moisture while the closed oven retains it. Perhaps this is the secret to the special taste of this age-old method of cooking.

While Tagins are found throughout Egypt, savvy Chefs use clay pots of various shapes and sizes, especially made to order in Upper Egypt, where skilled potters continue to produce this traditional crockery. There are deep Tagins, shallow ones, round and oval, but all impart their simple, wholesome glow on the food they hold. Even pizza is more appetizing this way, hot from the oven!

Siwa Dates

Photo by Combos Momn

Dates are Siwa’s pride and joy! With so many traditional varieties, many Siwans prefer dates to chocolate or baked sweets, as this form of sugar is natural.

Dates are used in many creative ways from date-filled crepes to date soufflé and date-stuffed biscuits. Traditionally, the pitted dates are used as a delicious and highly nutritious filling; for example in the preparation of Elhuji, a dish made of eggs with dates and olive oil; and Tagilla, made of flour, dates, water and olive oil. A date syrup can be used as a condiment.

Some of Siwa’s date production is bought up by Italians who love to eat dates at Christmas time, a tradition that goes back to the early days of Christianity when the Magi brought dates along as gifs for the newborn king. Dates in the Muslim world are traditionally eaten first to break the fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

Visitors to Siwa remember fondly a unique dish they enjoyed at breakfast: eggs cooked with dates, a memorable combination!

Pomegranate Craze

At a recent wedding in Siwa, guests were really drawn to the duck dish cooked with pomegranate seeds and Debs Romman (Pomegranate Concentrate). Not only for the duck, but guests also reached for the Debs when enjoying their dessert: they added it next to their pudding (mehallabeya)!

Traditionally, many meats were prepared using fruits, as "sweetmeats" (photo: tastingtable)

 The trend is to add the pomegranate to any dish you like, whether salad, meat or dessert. Known as a superfood for its extraordinary anti-oxidant activity, the pomegranate is popular also for its tart, fresh taste that it imparts to any dish.

Visually appealing, pomegranate seeds add tartness
to the taste of this salad (photo: hungryaustralian)

Using the concentrate made from the seeds makes cooking with pomegranate easy: simply add it in the final stages of cooking, or incorporate it off heat in any sauce or preparation for a fabulous flavor, color and taste.
 
The pomegranate concentrate is available at SIWA store on Ahmed Heshmat Street in Zamalek. 

Lors d'un mariage qui a eu lieu récemment à Siwa, nos rédacteurs ont remarqué que les invités étaient très attirés par les plats de canard cuit avec des grains de grenade et du Debs Romman (concentré de grenade). Non seulement pour le canard, les convives se sont également servi du Debs pour mieux savourer leurs desserts en l'ajoutant à la mehallabeya, un pudding au lait!

Les grains de grenade attirent l'oeil! (photo: theroastedroot)

Traditionnellement, les volailles, le canard ou le boeuf étaient souvent préparés avec les fruits desseches ou frais, comme «viandes dulcinées ou sucrées». La tendance de nos jours est d'ajouter la grenade à n'importe quel plat que vous aimez, que ce soit la salade, le plat principal ou meme le dessert (Photo: theroastedroot). 

Connu comme un "super-aliment" pour son activité anti-oxidante extraordinaire, la grenade est populaire aussi pour son goût acidulé et frais qu'elle impregne à n'importe quel plat. L'utilisation du concentré fait à partir des grains rend la cuisine à la grenade facile: il suffit de l'ajouter 6dans les étapes finales de la cuisson, ou de l'intégrer sans chauffer dans la sauce ou la préparation pour une saveur et couleur fabuleuses.

Le concentré de grenade est disponible au magasin SIWA sur la rue Ahmed Heshmat, à Zamalek.

Protein of the Future?

Photo: fao.org

Nawaya's was locally sponsored to attend an international conference hosted by Wageningen (pronounced "Va-khe-nin-gen) University and the FAO, whose focus was on the potential of farming insects for human food, as well as for animal feed. Attending this international event with over 450 participants was an inspiring event, presenting insects as a healthy and easily farmed protein source. The main interest was to better understand how Nawaya's Fayoumi (Bigawy) slow-growing chicken could be more cost-efficiently grown with a local feed source that could be implemented by small scale farmers. Interestingly, insects can be raised on food scraps and waste that aren't suitable for composting, making a highly attractive conversion rate, turning one creature's garbage into another creature's high-quality feed. What's more, chicken are genetically programed to eat insects, their development requires the intake of amino acids like methionine and lysine, naturally present in insects but chemically added in commercial chicken feed. To top it off, the ecological argument is that in such a small space with such little resources, protein can be farmed, and replace traditional soybean meal* that requires large amounts of land, water and resources -- better fit for human consumption, not for chicken!

Photo:wageningenur.nl

Insects in many countries have been traditionally eaten and collected, or for example in the Arab peninsula eaten during seasonal infestations. Insect consumption does however have a big "ew" factor, let alone that many people do not associate insects as healthy source of food. At the conference presenters tackled the consumer preferences, looking at everything from festivals, high end restaurants and chefs, just as importantly as research on infant growth and food industries exploring how insect protein also act as flavor enhancers. This idea is looking at the insects industry from a "bottom-up" approach, as cheap protein - then from a "top-down" as a new food fashion, that takes ground fast like Sushi restaurants. Farming insects will be accepted over time, and could be the future for cheaper more ecologically produced proteins, however it was constantly reminded that this industry is not the silver bullet that will save a 9 billion world from starvation. It is rather a new sector full of potential, and full of research needs - indeed the conference created a platform for many new partnerships and collaborations to take place. Nawaya will build on these to seek out its own path in Egypt to experiment with insects for chicken feed, hoping to find a silver bullet for indigenous poultry breeds to be competitive in the market, and in the long term to offer a healthy feed alternative that is locally produced.

by Laura Tabet

*Soybean meal is a solid by-product flour made from leftovers after grinding the soybean to extract soybean oil. It is used as a source of protein in animal feed, including chicken, cattle, horse, pig, sheep, and fish feed (adapted from wikipidia).